A Forest Hills Community Welcomes Disney, Wistfully

Even a decade after the arrival of the Gap and Benetton on Austin Street in Queens, next to boutiques and bistros owned by locals, some old-timers in Forest Hills Gardens still refer to the short shopping strip as ''the Village.''

The Village was never part of Forest Hills Gardens, a planned community of Tudor- and Georgian-style houses dotting gracefully curving and winding streets lined with towering trees and ornamental lampposts. It was just outside the cloistered neighborhood of Forest Hills Gardens, reached by passing under an elevated embankment of the Long Island Rail Road along its northern edge.

Many longtime neighborhood residents shrugged off the ever-multiplying chains, even the coming of a Barnes & Noble superstore last November. Some, grasping for a new name for Austin Street, baptized it ''the Madison Avenue of Queens.''

But perhaps nothing has made more people more wistful than the opening, on Aug. 2, of a Disney Store. No one disputes that the Disney Company's second merchandise store in New York City, on the corner of Austin Street and 70th Road, has drawn more shoppers here.

But just as some people complain that Disney's flagship store on Fifth Avenue and 55th Street has made Manhattan's classiest shopping district seem like a mall, and just as others see the quintessential suburban store's impending arrival in Times Square as a threat to Gotham's hard, seductive edges, some in Forest Hills worry about the intangible: the soul of Austin Street.

At the old bakeries, tailors and haberdashers that have vanished, the owners were often neighbors who extended personal credit, said Dick Davis, 54, who grew up on the corner of Austin and Ascan Avenue, raised a family in a house in the Gardens and now lives in a co-op there with his wife.

''If Disney's coming, maybe it's a compliment,'' Mr. Davis said. ''I'm not sure. I think Disney's wonderful. They have great characters. They're great for the kids. Disney is definitely free enterprise at its best.

''But it's starting to look a little like Myrtle Beach here -- all the stores selling the same stuff, with the same name on them. The personal aspect of it, of being a village, of dealing with people you knew in their shops and sometimes in social circles -- there's a certain feeling of security and warmth there. That's now gone.''

If the Gardens on the south side of the L.I.R.R. seem to symbolize the old Forest Hills, with the houses and private streets remarkably preserved by ironclad rules set by the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation, Austin Street and Disney on the other side suggest changes that have swept the rest of the borough.

Heskel Elias, for one, is not nostalgic. Mr. Elias, who immigrated from Israel in the early 1970's, developed the Disney property and said he is working on deals with California Pizza Kitchen, HMV Records, Victoria's Secret and Hallmark. The chains, he said, merely reflect the desires of a new clientele: the young professionals or the immigrant families from the former Soviet Union, Asia and Latin and South America who have transformed the once predominantly elderly and Jewish communities of Forest Hills, Kew Gardens and Rego Park.

''The village aspect of it is gone,'' he said. ''It's more commercial now. It's relating more to people that have seen the same name somewhere else and want to identify with it. It's not as cozy as it used to be.''

Mr. Elias said old-timers, including some on the local community board, were unwilling to accept the changing times. He blamed them for denying the Disney Store a grand opening on Aug. 3 by rejecting an application to close off a small block for a four-hour parade. Mr. Elias said he had to abruptly cancel the scheduled visit of 14 Disney performers from Orlando, Fla. ''Every one of those kids and parents asked me what happened to Minnie and Mickey,'' he said of opening day.

The community board rejected the application simply because Mr. Elias submitted it too late, Judy Rosen, who is in charge of street permits on the board, said. ''We would have been happy to have Mickey,'' Mrs. Rosen said. ''We would have been tickled pink. But we have the rules. Everybody has to follow the rules. We're not making exceptions. But we welcome Mickey Mouse.''

Mrs. Rosen, who is also a member of Friends of Station Square, a local preservation group, compared the chains with carpetbaggers who, though they might attract more shoppers, were unlikely to invest in the neighborhood.

''You have to have a good balance,'' she said. ''We have to watch that Austin Street doesn't become oversaturated with chains. I don't want to see California Pizza Kitchen. I want to see Joe's Pizza, or Sal's or Tony's Pizzeria.''

Local business owners, like Louis Gazda, 52, whose family has owned the Glascott Funeral Home some blocks away for 40 years, said the chains had saved Austin Street.

''On the negative side,'' he said, ''it's dirtier than it's ever been because of the increased traffic. Before, you could meet a neighbor on the sidewalk and stand and chat. Now, the sidewalks are so busy. You can't have the best of both worlds.''

If locals wish for utopia, it may be understandable given the history of Forest Hills Gardens, which were built around World War I. The community was a product of the English Garden Cities movement, a humanist reaction against the Industrial Revolution that sought to bring country living to city life. Although covenants once restricted occupancy to white Christians, that is no longer the case.

Until a decade ago, Woolworth's had been the only chain on Austin Street. Then stores catering to the young families in the area, like Banana Republic and Lechter's, arrived. The recession and high real estate prices put Austin Street into a slump in the early 1990's: stylish boutiques saw themselves sandwiched between discount stores, and in 1993, the Village endured the indignity of fighting off a nude dance club.

But the opening of a 20,000-square-foot Barnes & Noble's last November has sparked an onslaught of economic activity, said Joshua L. Muss, who developed the site which had been vacant for more than two years.

Just west of the bookstore, Mr. Muss said his company will break ground in a few weeks on a 32,000-square-foot store for Creativity, a chain specializing in hobbies.

In January, Mr. Elias persuaded Disney to open a 6,800-square-foot store with 30 to 35 employees, or in Disneyspeak, ''cast members.''

Debbie Bohnett, a spokeswoman for Disney, said Austin Street was the only site considered in Queens, and while more stores are planned for the city, none will be located outside Manhattan. Of the 384 Disney Stores in the United States, only four are not in shopping malls.

''What's different with Austin Street is that there's a real community there,'' Ms. Bohnett said. ''In Manhattan, we're not relying on the community but on tourism.''

Mr. Elias said he hoped the Disney Store, which closes at 9 P.M., will encourage other businesses on Austin Street to stay open later. The independent store owners usually go home around 7 P.M.

On a recent afternoon, the pedestrians were noticeably fewer, and older, on Austin Street's more established, eastern stretch. With the chains concentrated more and more toward the west, the older section recalled the slower and quieter days of the Village. At the Home Lighting Center, Embassy One-Hour Photo and PYNY Italian Shoes, handwritten signs were taped to the doors, announcing that the stores were closed because their owners were on vacation until after Labor Day.

A few blocks west, in the Disney Store, under a glitzy black ceiling with stage lights, Melissa Sanicola, 31, was pushing her children in a double stroller past aisles of clothing, toys and dolls from the Disney movies. The talk among the young mothers in the local park for the last few weeks had been about the opening of the Disney Store. And on their first visit, Mrs. Sanicola's children, Laura, 20 months old, and Christopher, 9 months, looked pleased.

When she and her husband moved to the area from Texas 10 years ago, Mrs. Sanicola said they often shopped at malls on Long Island. But now, they found everything they needed at the chains on Austin Street and had not been to a mall since last winter.

''It's great for us,'' Mrs. Sanicola said, ''but I can understand how the old-timers feel.''

She said that whenever she pushed her green, double baby carriage along Austin's narrow sidewalk, the people who had the greatest difficulty moving out of the way were the ones using canes and added, ''It's the old and the young, the old and the young.''

Correction: October 13, 1996, Sunday An article on Sept. 4 about changes in the commercial makeup of Austin Street in Queens referred imprecisely to past restrictions on who could live in Forest Hills Gardens, a planned community. (The error also occurred in an article in the City section on Sept. 3, 1995, about memories of Queens.) According to the Queens Historical Society, a widely known unwritten agreement restricted Forest Hills Gardens largely to white Christians until after World War II. A letter from a reader dated Oct. 3 points out that no written contract to that effect ever existed.